


to love the skies I'm under

by savorycheeks



Series: share your road [1]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, OT3, Other, Relationship Negotiation, a brief detour for angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-25
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 07:06:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5818972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savorycheeks/pseuds/savorycheeks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>First part of a series that may or may not devolve completely into JediStormPilot rom-com nonsense.</p>
            </blockquote>





	to love the skies I'm under

Poe cranes his neck, tipping his jaw so that it lines up just so, and there are something like four different warning lights going off in his skull, but they’re non-essential compared to Finn’s warm breath between them. He closes the last centimeter of space and presses his lips firm, but chaste, onto Finn’s.

In the half-second it takes for either of them to react, the warning lights flash, accompanied now by a blaring siren that sounds suspiciously like, “what were you thinking?!” bouncing between his ears.

But all of _that_ is silenced when Finn all but melts into Poe, his tentative hands tickling at Poe’s ribs and sending a flutter of every fumbling teenage kiss he’d ever had to his chest. Finn parts his lips, and Poe deepens the kiss, letting the tip of his tongue graze at its seam. 

All at once, Finn tenses and lets out a sudden huff through his nose. Poe opens his eyes before he considers breaking the kiss and is greeted with Finn’s eyes staring right back, wide and just this side of panicked. They’re both frozen for a moment before Poe has the wherewithal to pull back. He puts his hands, steady as he can make them, on Finn’s shoulders.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Poe ducks his head to better meet Finn’s gaze, which is currently aimed somewhere near their boots. “I’m sorry if that was too sudden. Are you okay?”

Finn looks up, and the panic is mostly drained from his eyes. Poe watches him compose himself, straightening his posture into a resemblance of confidence that makes Poe melt just a little more. 

“No, yeah, I’m fine. That was great, honestly.”

Poe eyes him skeptically

“I’ve actually been kind of _hoping_ \-- and, hah, look,” Finn scrubs a hand at the back of his neck as he considers, looking away from Poe --who, if he’s being honest, is probably staring back at him with a little too much intensity, but it’s hard not to. 

“Not to play the ‘raised from birth by a super-controlling fascist regime’ card, but, does this,“ he waves a hand between the two of them, “mean that we’re, you know, dating?”

It’s Poe’s turn to look away, because oh, _that’s_ what the warning lights had been about, probably. Finn has been with the Resistance for five months by the standard Republic calendar, and he’s fitting in surprisingly well, but it shouldn’t surprise Poe that romantic overtures might be foreign territory, or at least unwelcome. He moves his hands from Finn’s shoulders and awkwardly takes a moment as he decides to place them, with a posed nonchalance already drained of any effect it might have had, on his own hips.

“Only if that’s what you want, buddy. I know you’re still getting used to all this, and if you want some time to get your feet under you, or you’re just not interested, I totally--” Finn had raised his hand to protest, but a new train of thought interrupts and Poe finds himself blurting out, “Wait, so stormtroopers didn’t date? At all?”

Finn lets out a small, embarrassed chuckle, and Poe feels like an ass. 

“Oh, Force help me, that came out all wrong. I’m not trying to make you feel like, like…”

“Like I was raised from birth by a super-controlling fascist regime?” Finn smiles, real this time, and Poe feels some of the pressure in his cheeks deflate.

“Hah, yeah, exactly.” Poe pushes a hand through his hair and leans back into the nearest wall. “So, before I put my foot in my mouth any more, can you give me some context? Introduction to Stormtrooper Fraternization Protocols? I mean, if you don’t want to talk about it, that’s fine!”

“It’s cool!” Finn speaks quickly at first, slowly descending to a conversational tempo. “I just hate the way people look at me when they realize that something normal to them is completely bonkers to me, just because of the First Order. It’s pity and it’s condescending and I _hate_ it.”

Poe schools his features into a sort of neutral interest, trying for all the world to tow the line of understanding without crossing into sympathy. It’s not what Finn wants and it’s not how Poe _feels_. Finn missed out on a lot by his standards, sure. But First Order life was all he’d known, and what little information he’d gleaned, Finn had even been good at it. 

Until he threw it all away for a doomed pilot who was too cocky for his own good, anyway.

A twist of affection knots itself in Poe’s stomach, but he keeps a straight face.

“We knew what dating was, and you could probably call the arrangements that some of the other troopers had ‘couples’, but you _always_ knew the First Order came first. Relationships of any kind were secondary to service, and if they thought any _fraternizing_ ,” Finn speaks this last word with an accent that Poe has come to recognize as a mocking imitation of his commanding officer, a cold-hearted captain Poe had thankfully had little interaction with during his brief detainment, “was getting in the way of your performance, they would just separate them. No warning, no explanation, just orders to join another fire-team. And you’d have to be struck with a serious head injury before you considered questioning them, much less fighting it.”

Poe nods and crosses his arms. “Other troopers.” He gestures with an open palm at Finn. “Did you not engage in those arrangements?”

Finn shrugs. “I was the sort of unofficial leader of my fire-team, so I kept some distance, and I never felt like real ‘trooper, you know?” Poe nods, because Finn isn’t like anyone. “I dunno, I did well in simulations, and my team seemed to like me well enough, I just, I felt like I was trying too hard. I just didn’t know any other way to try.”

Realization dawns on Poe, and he squints at Finn. “Was… was that your first kiss?”

Finn tenses and his hands raise immediately in defense. “No, no!” he strokes his chin, looking at the ceiling as he considers. “That was, like, at least number three.”

Poe’s eyebrows come together in a helpless smile, because oh, three, of course. That’s completely fine. He makes a mental note to _listen_ to the warning bells next time he thinks to kiss a gorgeous ex-stormtrooper.

“Can I ask about the first two?” 

“Do _you_ usually have to recite your romantic history to new partners?” He smirks at Poe, but the corners of his mouth droop as he says, “Honest question.”

“No, but I will if you want me to. Again, I just want context. Don’t tell me anything you don’t want to.”

“Right, right. Well, there was one on my team. Everyone called him Slip. He kissed me once.” Finn looked down, shaking away a memory. “It was only a couple days before our first deployment. I, you know, I protected him a little bit. I wasn’t supposed to and it’s not that he was helpless! He was a ‘trooper, one of us, he just… I think about him now. I think about how in the First Order they made you believe that a person who wasn’t strong enough to survive alone deserved to fall. We didn’t know that places like this exist, where soldiers _protect_ people who can’t defend themselves. He… he died on Jakku.”

“I’m sorry, Finn.” Poe places a tentative hand on his shoulder. 

“That’s the thing, he was ready to die! He couldn’t wait for a combat mission to prove himself. He kissed me, and he _thanked_ me, for always having his back, for helping him make it that far. I told him that I always would, because he was one of us. He was ready to sacrifice himself on Jakku. I just… wasn’t read to lose him.” Finn takes a deep breath, shoving his hands in his pockets. 

“I don’t want you to think that I pity you, Finn, because I admire you way too much for that,” Poe tugs at the bottom of Finn’s jacket, narrowing the space between them by a few inches, “but I’m sorry for what those First Order assholes did to you and your friends. I’m gonna do everything I can to stop them.”

“You were gonna do that anyway.” A quirk at the corner of Finn’s mouth isn’t much, but it’s something.

“Yeah well,” Poe grazes his knuckles against the jacket at Finn’s shoulder, “a little extra motivation never hurt anything.” Poe feels the color rushing back to his cheeks at Finn’s smile, so he changes the subject. “And number two?” he blurts out, feeling only a little guilty for prying.

“Well…” Finn’s shoulders rise and fall, and he pushes forward, hesitant. “I kind of kissed Rey. Yesterday.” 

“Oh.”

A lead weight falls from Poe’s ribcage to his gut, and he does his best not to stagger. “Okay, so are you and her…?”

“I don’t know! I don’t think so?” Finn turns away and paces, his arms crossed over his chest. “It was after we had lunch in the mess hall, and she seemed to like it, but she ran off to training without another word and…”

“You’re not sure where you stand?”

It’s worth noting how much Poe really, truly, does not want to give Finn advice about dating anyone other than himself, except he also physically cannot help but want to give him the kriffing _world_ , so he’s kind of stuck. 

“Exactly. I mean, maybe platonic kissing is really big on Jakku?”

“Not as far as I’ve heard,” mutters Poe distractedly. “For what it’s worth, this totally happens to people who-- basically people everywhere. Not just ex-Stormtroopers, I mean. If you like her, I can back off. We can be friends, that’s fine with me.”

Finn whirls around, surprised. “What, no! I mean, krif, this is weird, isn’t it?” He covers his face with his hands and slides them down his eyes, his nose, his mouth, his-- Poe’s distracted.

“No, it doesn’t have to be. I’m the one who made the move, just tell me to back off.” Poe shakes his head; he can be the gentleman here, “No, I mean, I will back off.”

“I don’t want you to! Unless you want me to want you to?” Finn sighs. “See what I mean? It’s totally weird.”

Poe smiles, despite the sensation of his chest cracking open. “It’s _fine_.” 

Finn looks doubtful. 

“How about, you tell me what you want, and we’ll work from there?”

Finn does a slow, agitated lap around Poe’s quarters, gathering his thoughts. Poe settles in the one chair in the room, prepared to give Finn all the time he needs to work it out.

Surprising him, Finn takes a seat on the bed after a few seconds, wrinkling the neatly folded sheets and idly smoothing them back down.

He stares at Poe, a wrinkle of grim determination between his eyes. 

“Poe, I like you.” He clasps his hands together seriously. “A lot. And I would really like to keep kissing you.”

The grin tugs at Poe’s face from one side, waiting for the other shoe to drop. “So far we’re on the same page, but obviously there’s more.”

“Yeah. I really like Rey. She’s tough and beautiful and actually really sweet when she’s not kicking your ass with that stick of hers, and-- I’m sorry, this is horrible.”

It is completely horrible. “It’s not horrible,” says Poe. “I totally get it, you two get along great, you have a lot in common, it’s just makes sense.” His face is a perfect study in neutrality. He hopes.

“I like _both_ of you! So much! _That_ doesn’t make sense. Or, it does because you’re both incredible people and great to look at, but I’m pretty new to this dating thing and I can’t have two partners!”

“Well…” says Poe, and immediately considers backpedaling.

“Well what? That’s not, or. _Is_ that a thing people do?”

“Okay, admittedly not all the time, but there are at least a few cultures in the galaxy where that’s the default romantic arrangement, and it happens with humans more than you might think.”

“But doesn’t that get, I don’t know, awkward? Weird.”

“It can get downright messy, but sometimes it works out. As long as everyone is aboveboard and honest, I don’t see any real problem with it.”

Finn leans back, soaking in this new information, and Poe is torn because did he really just give the guy he likes, who’s having his first romantic crisis no less, advice to engage in a polyamorous relationship? But on the other hand, Finn wants to keep kissing him, so maybe questionable judgement can be excused?

Poe is in the midst of honestly wondering why he is even allowed to speak to civilized people when Finn stands and looks at him decidedly. 

“Would you want that?” 

Damn. That’s the question, isn’t it? In order to even entertain the notion, everyone has to be on board, and maybe it’s not ideal, but what is, really?

“I’m willing to give it a shot.” 

Finn smiles wide and strides to Poe, kneeling down and leaning in. “Yeah? Do you think she’ll want it?”

Poe fails to completely stifle the wince that twists his face, but he recovers quickly, looking into Finn’s searching, hopeful eyes and resigning himself to being doomed. “There’s only one way to find out, but if I’m willing to share you, she might be, too.”

Finn’s face scrunches and he leans back on his heals. “Share _me_? No, no, wouldn’t we all, I don’t know, share each other?” 

Opening and closing his mouth, Poe feels a little like the atmosphere in the room has gone suddenly thin. He hadn’t considered that.

“Oh, um. In theory? Don’t get me wrong, Rey seems lovely, but I barely know her, and I can’t speak to her opinion of me.”

Finn looks incredulous. “Isn’t that what dates are for?” 

Poe nods, a little confused.

“Then it’s settled!” Finn tugs Poe’s shirt, pulling him gently forward in the chair.

“It is?” With an uncertainty that hasn’t plagued him since he _was_ a fumbling teenager, Poe wraps his arms around Finn’s waist. 

“We’ll take Rey on a date.”

Poe wants to object --because somehow, someway this has to be a bad idea, right?-- but finds he has nothing whatsoever to say, and anyway, he can’t very well speak past the enthusiastic press of Finn’s warm lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from a damn Mumford and Sons song, because titles are too hard, and, unrelated, run-on sentences and I are running away together.


End file.
